The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales

  CHAPTER XIII.

  THE END OF THE STORM.

  Of all the things that seem strange in that battle, now that I look backupon it, there is nothing that was queerer than the way in which itacted on my comrades; for some took it as though it had been their dailymeat without question or change, and others pattered out prayers fromthe first gunfire to the last, and others again cursed and swore in away that was creepy to listen to. There was one, my own left-hand man,Mike Threadingham, who kept telling about his maiden aunt, Sarah, andhow she had left the money which had been promised to him to a home forthe children of drowned sailors. Again and again he told me this story,and yet when the battle was over he took his oath that he had neveropened his lips all day. As to me, I cannot say whether I spoke or not,but I know that my mind and my memory were clearer than I can everremember them, and I was thinking all the time about the old folk athome, and about Cousin Edie with her saucy, dancing eyes, and de Lissacwith his cat's whiskers, and all the doings at West Inch, which hadended by bringing us here on the plains of Belgium as a cockshot for twohundred and fifty cannons.

  During all this time the roaring of those guns had been somethingdreadful to listen to, but now they suddenly died away, though it waslike the lull in a thunderstorm when one feels that a worse crash iscoming hard at the fringe of it. There was still a mighty noise on thedistant wing, where the Prussians were pushing their way onwards, butthat was two miles away. The other batteries, both French and English,were silent, and the smoke cleared so that the armies could see a littleof each other. It was a dreary sight along our ridge, for there seemedto be just a few scattered knots of red and the lines of green where theGerman Legion stood, while the masses of the French appeared to be asthick as ever, though of course we knew that they must have lost manythousands in these attacks. We heard a great cheering and shouting fromamong them, and then suddenly all their batteries opened together with aroar which made the din of the earlier part seem nothing in comparison.It might well be twice as loud, for every battery was twice as near,being moved right up to point blank range, with huge masses of horsebetween and behind them to guard them from attack.

  When that devil's roar burst upon our ears there was not a man, down tothe drummer boys, who did not understand what it meant. It wasNapoleon's last great effort to crush us. There were but two more hoursof light, and if we could hold our own for those all would be well.Starved and weary and spent, we prayed that we might have strength toload and stab and fire while one of us stood upon his feet.

  His cannon could do us no great hurt now, for we were on our faces, andin an instant we could turn into a huddle of bayonets if his horse camedown again. But behind the thunder of the guns there rose a sharper,shriller noise, whirring and rattling, the wildest, jauntiest, moststirring kind of sound.

  "It's the _pas-de-charge!_" cried an officer. "They mean business thistime!"

  And as he spoke we saw a strange thing. A Frenchman, dressed as anofficer of hussars, came galloping towards us on a little bay horse.He was screeching "_Vive le roi! Vive le roi!_" at the pitch of hislungs, which was as much as to say that he was a deserter, since we werefor the king and they for the emperor. As he passed us he roared out inEnglish, "The Guard is coming! The Guard is coming!" and so vanishedaway to the rear like a leaf blown before a storm. At the same instantup there rode an aide-de-camp, with the reddest face that ever I sawupon mortal man.

  "You must stop 'em, or we are done!" he cried to General Adams, so thatall our company could hear him.

  "How is it going?" asked the general.

  "Two weak squadrons left out of six regiments of heavies," said he, andbegan to laugh like a man whose nerves are overstrung.

  "Perhaps you would care to join in our advance? Pray consider yourselfquite one of us," said the general, bowing and smiling as if he wereasking him to a dish of tea.

  "I shall have much pleasure," said the other, taking off his hat; and amoment afterwards our three regiments closed up, and the brigadeadvanced in four lines over the hollow where we had lain in square, andout beyond to the point whence we had seen the French army.

  There was little of it to be seen now, only the red belching of the gunsflashing quickly out of the cloudbank, and the black figures--stooping,straining, mopping, sponging--working like devils, and at devilish work.But through the cloud that rattle and whirr rose ever louder and louder,with a deep-mouthed shouting and the stamping of thousands of feet.Then there came a broad black blurr through the haze, which darkened andhardened until we could see that it was a hundred men abreast, marchingswiftly towards us, with high fur hats upon their heads and a gleam ofbrasswork over their brows. And behind that hundred came anotherhundred, and behind that another, and on and on, coiling and writhingout of the cannon-smoke like a monstrous snake, until there seemed to beno end to the mighty column. In front ran a spray of skirmishers, andbehind them the drummers, and up they all came together at a kind oftripping step, with the officers clustering thickly at the sides andwaving their swords and cheering. There were a dozen mounted men too attheir front, all shouting together, and one with his hat held aloft uponhis swordpoint. I say again, that no men upon this earth could havefought more manfully than the French did upon that day.

  It was wonderful to see them; for as they came onwards they got ahead oftheir own guns, so that they had no longer any help from them, whilethey got in front of the two batteries which had been on either side ofus all day. Every gun had their range to a foot, and we saw long redlines scored right down the dark column as it advanced. So near werethey, and so closely did they march, that every shot ploughed throughten files of them, and yet they closed up and came on with a swing anddash that was fine to see. Their head was turned straight forourselves, while the 95th overlapped them on one side and the 52nd onthe other.

  I shall always think that if we had waited so the Guard would havebroken us; for how could a four-deep line stand against such a column?But at that moment Colburne, the colonel of the 52nd, swung his rightflank round so as to bring it on the side of the column, which broughtthe Frenchmen to a halt. Their front line was forty paces from us atthe moment, and we had a good look at them. It was funny to me toremember that I had always thought of Frenchmen as small men; for therewas not one of that first company who could not have picked me up as ifI had been a child, and their great hats made them look taller yet.They were hard, wizened, wiry fellows too, with fierce puckered eyes andbristling moustaches, old soldiers who had fought and fought, week in,week out, for many a year. And then, as I stood with my finger upon thetrigger waiting for the word to fire, my eye fell full upon the mountedofficer with his hat upon his sword, and I saw that it was de Lissac.

  I saw it, and Jim did too. I heard a shout, and saw him rush forwardmadly at the French column; and, as quick as thought, the whole brigadetook their cue from him, officers and all, and flung themselves upon theGuard in front, while our comrades charged them on the flanks. We hadbeen waiting for the order, and they all thought now that it had beengiven; but you may take my word for it, that Jim Horscroft was the realleader of the brigade when we charged the Old Guard.

  God knows what happened during that mad five minutes. I rememberputting my musket against a blue coat and pulling the trigger, and thatthe man could not fall because he was so wedged in the crowd; but I sawa horrid blotch upon the cloth, and a thin curl of smoke from it as ifit had taken fire. Then I found myself thrown up against two bigFrenchmen, and so squeezed together, the three of us, that we could notraise a weapon. One of them, a fellow with a very large nose, got hishand up to my throat, and I felt that I was a chicken in his grasp."_Rendez-vous, coqin; rendez-vous!_" said he, and then suddenly doubledup with a scream, for someone had stabbed him in the bowels with abayonet. There was very little firing after the first sputter; butthere was the crash of butt against barrel, the short cries of strickenmen, and the roaring of the officers. And then, suddenly, they began togive ground--slowly, sullenly, step
by step, but still to give ground.Ah! it was worth all that we had gone through, the thrill of thatmoment, when we felt that they were going to break. There was oneFrenchman before me, a sharp-faced, dark-eyed man, who was loading andfiring as quietly as if he were at practice, dwelling upon his aim, andlooking round first to try and pick off an officer. I remember that itstruck me that to kill so cool a man as that would be a good service,and I rushed at him and drove my bayonet into him. He turned as Istruck him and fired full into my face, and the bullet left a wealacross my cheek which will mark me to my dying day. I tripped over himas he fell, and two others tumbling over me I was half smothered in theheap. When at last I struggled out, and cleared my eyes, which werehalf full of powder, I saw that the column had fairly broken, and wasshredding into groups of men, who were either running for their lives orwere fighting back to back in a vain attempt to check the brigade, whichwas still sweeping onwards. My face felt as if a red-hot iron had beenlaid across it; but I had the use of my limbs, so jumping over thelitter of dead and mangled men, I scampered after my regiment, and fellin upon the right flank.

  Old Major Elliott was there, limping along, for his horse had been shot,but none the worse in himself. He saw me come up, and nodded, but itwas too busy a time for words. The brigade was still advancing, but thegeneral rode in front of me with his chin upon his shoulder, lookingback at the British position.

  "There is no general advance," said he; "but I'm not going back."

  "The Duke of Wellington has won a great victory," cried theaide-de-camp, in a solemn voice; and then, his feelings getting thebetter of him, he added, "if the damned fool would only push on!"--whichset us all laughing in the flank company.

  But now anyone could see that the French army was breaking up.The columns and squadrons which had stood so squarely all day were nowall ragged at the edges; and where there had been thick fringes ofskirmishers in front, there were now a spray of stragglers in the rear.The Guard thinned out in front of us as we pushed on, and we foundtwelve guns looking us in the face, but we were over them in a moment;and I saw our youngest subaltern, next to him who had been killed by thelancer, scribbling great 71's with a lump of chalk upon them, like theschoolboy that he was. It was at that moment that we heard a roar ofcheering behind us, and saw the whole British army flood over the crestof the ridge, and come pouring down upon the remains of their enemies.The guns, too, came bounding and rattling forward, and our lightcavalry--as much as was left of it--kept pace with our brigade upon theright. There was no battle after that. The advance went on without acheck, until our army stood lined upon the very ground which the Frenchhad held in the morning. Their guns were ours, their foot were a rabblespread over the face of the country, and their gallant cavalry alone wasable to preserve some sort of order and to draw off unbroken from thefield. Then at last, just as the night began to gather, our weary andstarving men were able to let the Prussians take the job over, and topile their arms upon the ground that they had won. That was as much asI saw or can tell you about the Battle of Waterloo, except that I ate atwo-pound rye loaf for my supper that night, with as much salt meat asthey would let me have, and a good pitcher of red wine, until I had tobore a new hole at the end of my belt, and then it fitted me as tight asa hoop to a barrel. After that I lay down in the straw where the restof the company were sprawling, and in less than a minute I was in a deadsleep.